lilt 



r 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

1111:111 




007 032 361 8 M 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



D 642 
.MS 
1918 
Copy 1 



The Bases 

of 

Durable Peace 



As Voiced By 



President Wilson 



^^ I. America's Purpose: International Justice and World ^= 

^^ Peace— at New York, 27 September, 1918 ^^ 

^M II. Program for World Peace; the 14 Points of 8 Janu- ^g 

^m ary, 1918 = 

^^ III. Reply to von Hertling and Czernin: the 4 Cardinal ^^ 

^^ Principles of 11 February, 1918 ^^ 

^^ IV. Force to the Utmost; Reply to the Prussian Chal- ^g 

= lenge— 6 April, 1918 ^ 

= V. The 4 War Aims; at Mt. Vernon, 4 July, 1918 ^M 



THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB 

OF CHICAGO 

1918 



Resolutions Anent President Wilson's New York 

Address of 27 September, 1918, Adopted by 

the War Committee of the Union League 

Club of Chicago, October 3, 1918. 



T~^EALIZ1NG the scope and implications of President Wilson's 
#"^ statement of the zvar policies of the United States in his 
Nezv York address of 27 September, 1918, and that no such 
szveeping and searching declaration of purpose in regard to the 
relations of nations to one another has ever before been made by 
the responsible head of a pozverful nation in a time of zvorld crisis 
and readjustment ; 

Recalling that many of the wars that have devastated Europe 
in the past have had their roots in unjust conditions created or 
acquiesced in by treaties of peace that ignored the rights of peoples; 

Bearing in mind that this shocking zirar, that has finally involved 
the United States, has its causes in deep-seated injustice imbedded 
in existing European conditions and in the purpose of the Central 
Pozjuers to perpetrate yet further injustice at the expense of neigh- 
boring nations assumed to be helpless; 

Seeing clearly that war can no longer be easily localized in a 
zvorld of closely knit international relations and that, only through 
the establishment of substantial justice between the peoples of the 
zvorld, can we in the United States hope, henceforth, to find peace 
for ourselves; 

And believing that the principles, so nobly conceived and so 
clearly set forth by the President, zvill, if put into effect by our Allies 
and ourselves, go for tozvard lifting from the world the nightmare of 
war and the social and economic burdens that it entails and zvill 
set free mens hands and minds and spirits for the nobler tasks of 
peace; 

We, the War Committee of the Union League Club of Chicago, 
hereby record our whole-hearted concurrence in the President's 
declaration of principles, and zve pledge our best endeavors to the 
end that, so far as lies in the will and act of the United States, peace, 
zvhen attained, shall not once more involve the bartering away of 
the rights of peoples in the interest of dynasties or of powerful 
states or groups of states, but shall square zvith the President's 
solemn declaration. 

mst 



Copies may be obtained of the War Committee of the Union League Club 
of Chicago, at the following prices, delivery prepaid : 

Single copies 5 cents 

One hundred copies $ 2.50 

One thousand copies 20.00 



1 

\ 



20 



LIBRfiRY OF CONGRESS 



Pamphlets on Pressing ■■■■™^^ 

Printed by 

The War Committee of the Union League Club 
of Chicago 



Three pamphlets dealing with the 
business situation in war time 

UNUSUAL BUSINESS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL 

By Harold G. Moulton 

A pamphlet dealing with the necessity of putting war work ahead of private 
work. 15 pages. 

YOUR BUSINESS AND WAR BUSINESS 

By Harold G. Moulton 

A pamphlet telling manufacturers how they may adjust their business to 
the needs of the nation at war. 23 pages. 

THE DUTY OF THE CONSUMER IN WAR TIME 

By Harold G. Moulton 

In which the duty of everyone to economize and forego luxuries in order 
that the Government may not lack for labor and supplies, is forcefully 
pointed out. 16 pages. 

These business pamphlets may be had singly or in quantities at the follow- 
ing prices: Single copy, 5c; 100 copies, $2.00; 1000 copies, $10.00. 



Two pamphlets dealing with vital war questions 
WHY WE FIGHT By Clarence L. Speed 

In which the reasons which forced America into the war are pointed out. 
28 pages. Single copy, 5c; 100 copies, $2.00; 1000 copies, $10.00. 

OUR PERIL ON THE EASTERN FRONT 

By Clarence L. Speed 

Showing the danger to America and the world which would result from a 
premature peace, leaving conquests in the East in German hands. 22 pages, 
with nationality map of Middle Europe. Single copy, 5c; 100 copies, $2.00; 
1000 copies, $15.00. 



Leaflets for quantity distribu- 
tion in factories and elsewhere 

OUR PERIL ON THE EASTERN FRONT 

By Clarence L, Speed 

A study of the Eastern situation in shorter form. 

THEIR JOB AND OURS By Clarence L. Speed 

Showing the necessity of working at home like our soldiers in France fight. 

LUXURY OR VICTORY— WHICH ? By Clarence L. Speed 

Showing the necessity of economizing in individual expenditures in order 
that the Government may not lack materials and labor for necessary "jpir work. 
These leaflets may be had for $1.00 a hundred, or $4.fX) a thop- 



ryyr 






America's Purpose 



The Establishment of Justice Between the Nations- 
New York Address of 27 September, 1918 



My Fellow-Citizens : I am not here to promote the loan. 
That will be done — ably and enthusiastically done — 
by the hundreds of thousands of loyal and tireless 
men and women who have undertaken to present it to you 
and to our fellow-citizens throughout the country; and I 
have not the least doubt of their complete success; for I 
know their spirit and the spirit of the country. My confi- 
dence is confirmed, too, by the thoughtful and experienced 
co-operation of the bankers here and everywhere, who are 
lending their invaluable aid and guidance. 

I have come, rather, to seek an opportunity to present 
to you some thoughts which I trust will serve to give you, 
in perhaps fuller measure than before, a vivid sense of the 
great issues involved, in order that you may appreciate and 
accept with added enthusiasm the grave significance of the 
duty of supporting the government by your men and your 
means to the utmost point of sacrifice and self-denial. No 
man or woman who has really taken in what this war means 
can hesitate to give to the very limit of what they have ; and 
it is my mission here tonight to try to make it clear once 
more what the war really means. You will need no other 
stimulation or reminder of your duty. 

At every turn of the war we gain a fresh consciousness 
of what we mean to accomplish by it. When our hope and 
expectation are most exicted we think more definitely than 
before of the issues that hang upon it and of the purposes 
which must be realized by means of it. For it has positive 
and well-defined purposes which we did not determine and 
which we cannot alter. No statesman or assembly created 
them ; no statesman or assembly can alter them. They have 
arisen out of the very nature and circumstances of the war. 
The most that statesmen or assemblies can do is to carry 



them out or be false to them. They were perhaps not clear 
at the outset; but they are clear now. The war has lasted 
more than four years and the whole world has been drawn 
into it. 

Mankind's Common Will Rules. 

The common will of mankind has been substituted for 
the particular purpose of individual states. Individual 
statesmen may have started the conflict, but neither they nor 
their opponents can stop it as they please. It has become a 
peoples' war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every 
degree of power and variety of fortune, are involved in its 
sweeping processes of change and settlement. We came 
into it when its character had become fully defined and it 
was plain that no nation could stand apart or be indifferent 
to its outcome. Its challenge drove to the heart of every- 
thing we cared for and lived for. The voice of the war had 
become clear and gripped our hearts. Our brothers from 
many lands, as well as our own murdered dead under the 
sea, were calling to us, and we responded, fiercely and of 
course. 

The air was clear about us. We saw things in their full, 
convincing proportions as they were; and we have seen 
them with steady eyes and unchanging comprehension ever 
since. We accepted the issues of the war as facts, not as 
any group of men either here or elsewhere had defined them, 
and we can accept no outcome which does not squarely meet 
and settle them. 

Five Issues of the War. 

Those issues are these: 

Shall the military power of any nation or group 
of nations be suffered to determine the fortunes of 
peoples over whom they have no right to rule ex- 
cept the right of force? 

Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak 
nations and make them subject to their purpose and 
interest? 

Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in 
their own internal affairs, by arbitrary and irre- 
sponsible foce or by their own will and choice? 

Shall there be a common standard of right and 
privilege for all peoples and nations or shall the 



strong do as they will and the weak suflfer without 
redress? 

Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and 
by casual alliance or shall there be a common con- 
cert to oblige the observance of common rights? 
No man, no group of men, chose these to be the issues 
of the struggle. They are the issues of it; and they 
must be settled — by no arrangement or compromise or ad- 
justment of interests, but definitely and once for all and 
with a full and unequivocal acceptance of the principle that 
the interest of the v^eakest is as sacred as the interest of 
the strongest. 

What Permanent Peace Means. 

This is v^hat we mean when we speak of a permanent 
peace, if we speak sincerely, intelligently, and with a real 
knowledge and comprehension of the matter we deal with. 

We are all agreed that there can be no peace obtained 
by any kind of bargain or compromise with the governments 
of the Central Empires, because we have dealt with them 
already and have seen them deal with other governments 
that were parties to this struggle, at Brest-Litovsk and 
Bucharest. They have convinced us that they are without 
honor and do not intend justice. They observe no cove- 
nants, accept no principle but force and their own interest. 
We cannot "come to terms" with them. They have made 
it impossible. The German people must by this time be 
fully aware that we cannot accept the word of those who 
forced this war upon us. We do not think the same thoughts 
or speak the same language of agreement. 

It is of capital importance that we should also be ex- 
plicitly agreed that no peace shall be obtained by any kind 
of compromise or abatement of the principles we have 
avowed as the principles for which we are fighting. There 
should exist no doubt about that. I am, therefore, going to 
take the liberty of speaking with the utmost frankness about 
the practical implications that are involved in it. 

If it be indeed and in truth the common object of the 
governments associated against Germany and of the nations 
whom they govern, as I believe it to be, to achieve by the 
coming settlements a secure and lasting peace, it will be 
necessary that all who sit down at the peace table shall come 
ready and willing to pay the price, the only price, that will 



procure it; and ready and willing, also, to create in some 
virile fashion the only instrumentality by which it can be 
made certain that the agreements of the peace will be 
honored and fulfilled. 

Impartial Justice Must Be Done. 

That price is impartial justice in every item of the set- 
tlement, no matter whose interest is crossed; and not only 
impartial justice, but also the satisfaction of the several 
peoples whose fortunes are dealt with. That indispensable 
instrumentality is a League of Nations formed under cove- 
nants that will be efficacious. Without such an instru- 
mentality, by which the peace of the world can be guaran- 
teed, peace will res-t in part upon the word of outlaws, and 
only upon that word. For Germany w^ill have to redeem her 
character, not by what happens at the peace table, but by 
what follows. 

And, as I see it, the constitution of that League of 
Nations and the clear definition of its objects must be a part, 
is in a sense the most essential part, of the peace settlement 
itself. It cannot be formed now. If formed now, it would 
be merely a new alliance confined to the nations associated 
against a common enemy. It is not likely that it could be 
formed after the settlement. It is necessary to guarantee 
the peace; and the peace cannot be guaranteed as an after- 
thought. The reason, to speak in plain terms again, why it 
must be guaranteed is that there will be parties to the peace 
whose promises have proved untrustworthy, and means 
must be found in connection with the peace settlement itself 
to remove that source of insecurity. It would be folly to 
leave the guarantee to the subsequent voluntary action of 
the governments we have seen destroy Russia and deceive 
Rumania. 

Five Particulars of Settlement. 

But these general terms do not disclose the whole mat- 
ter. Some details are needed to make them sound less like a 
thesis and more like a practical program. These, then, are 
some of the particulars, and I state them with the greater 
confidence because I can state them authoritatively as repre- 
senting this government's interpretation of its own duty 
with regard to peace : 



First, the impartial justice meted out must in- 
volve no discrimination between those to whom we 
wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish 
to be just. It must be a justice that plays no 
favorites and knows no standard but the equal 
rights of the several peoples concerned; 

Second, no special or separate interest of any 
single nation or any group of nations can be made 
the basis of any part of the settlement which is 
not consistent with the common interest of all; 

Third, there can be no leagues or alliances or 
special covenants and understandings within the 
general and common family of the League of 
Nations ; 

Fourth, and more specifically, there can be no 
special,' selfish economic combinations within the 
league and no employment of any form of economic 
boycott or exclusion except as the power of eco- 
nomic penalty by exclusion from the markets of 
the world may be vested in the League of Nations 
itself as a means of discipline and control; 

Fifth, all international agreements and treaties 
of every kind must be made known in their en- 
tirety to the rest of the world. 

Must Exclude Special Alliances. 

Special alliances and economic rivalries and hostilities 
have been the prolific source in the modern world of the 
plans and passions that produce war. It would be an in- 
sincere as well as an insecure peace that did not exclude 
them in definite and binding terms. 

The confidence with which I venture to speak for our 
people in these matters does not spring from our traditions 
merely and the well-known principles of international action 
which we have always professed and followed. In the same 
sentence in which I say that the United States will enter 
into no special arrangements or understandings with par- 
ticular nations, let me say also that the United States is pre- 
pared to assume its full share of responsibility for the main- 
tenance of the common covenants and understandings upon 
which peace must henceforth rest. We still read Washing- 
ton's immortal warning against "entangling alliances" with 



full comprehension and an answering purpose. But only 
special and limited alliances entangle; and we recognize 
and accept the duty of a new day in which we are permitted 
to hope for a general alliance which will avoid entangle- 
ments and clear the air of the world for common under- 
standings and the maintenance of common rights. 

I have made this analysis of the international situation 
which the war has created, not, of course, because I doubted 
whether the leaders of the great nations and peoples with 
whom we are associated were of the same mind and enter- 
tained a like purpose, but because the air every now and again 
gets darkened by mists and groundless doubtings and mis- 
chievous perversions of counsel and it is necessary once 
and again to sweep all the irresponsible talk about peace in- 
trigues and weakening morale and doubtful purpose on the 
part of those in authority utterly, and if need be uncere- 
moniously, aside and say things in the plainest words that 
can be found, even when it is only to say over again what 
has been said before, quite as plainly if in less unvarnished 
terms. 

Responds to the Issues of War. 

As I have said, neither I nor any other man in govern- 
mental authority created or gave form to the issues of this 
war. I have simply responded to them with such vision 
as I could command. But I have responded gladly and with 
a resolution that has grown warmer and more confident as 
the issues have grown clearer and clearer. It is now plain 
that they are issues which no man can pervert unless it be 
willfully. I am bound to fight for them, and happy to fight 
for them as time and circumstance have revealed them to 
me as to all the world. Our enthusiasm for them grows 
more and more irresistible as they stand out in more and 
more vivid and unmistakable outline. 

And the forces that fight for them draw into closer and 
closer array, organize their millions into more and more un- 
conquerable might, as they become more and more distinct 
to the thought and purpose of the peoples engaged. It is the 
peculiarity of this great war that while statesmen have 
seemed to cast about for definitions of their purpose and 
have sometimes seemed to shift their ground and their point 
of view, the thought of the mass of men, whom statesmen 
are supposed to instruct and lead, has grown more and more 



unclouded, more and more certain of what it is that they 
are fighting for. National purposes have fallen more and 
more into the background and the common purpose of en- 
lightened mankind has taken their place. The counsels of 
plain men have become on all hands more simple and 
straightforward and more unified than the counsels of 
sophisticated men of affairs, who still retain the impression 
that they are playing a game of power and playing for high 
stakes. That is why I have said that this is a peoples' war, 
not a statemen's. Statesmen must follow the, clarified com- 
mon thought or be broken. 

Glad to State War Aims. 

I take that to be the significance of the fact that as- 
semblies and associations of many kinds made up of plain 
workaday people have demanded, almost every time they 
came together, and are still demanding, that the leaders of 
their governments declare to them plainly what it is, exactly 
what it is, that they are seeking in this war, and what they 
think the items of the final settlement should be. They are 
not yet satisfied with what they have been told. They still 
seem to fear that they are getting what they ask for only in 
statesmen's terms — only in the terms of territorial arrange- 
ments and divisions of power, and not in terms of broad- 
visioned justice and mercy and peace and the satisfaction 
of those deep-seated longings of oppressed and distracted 
men and women and enslaved peoples that seem to them the 
only things worth fighting a war for that engulfs the world. 
Perhaps statesmen have not always recognized this changed 
aspect of the whole world of policy and action. Perhaps they 
have not always spoken in direct reply to the questions asked 
because they did not know how searching those questions 
were and what sort of answers they demanded. 

But I, for one, am glad to attempt the answer again and 
again, in the hope that I may make it clearer and clearer 
that my one thought is to satisfy those who struggle in the 
ranks and are, perhaps above all others, entitled to a reply 
whose meaning no one can have any excuse for misunder- 
standing, if he understands the language in which it is 
spoken or can get someone to translate it correctly into his 
own. And I believe that the leaders of the governments 
with which we are associated will speak, as they have occa- 
sion, as plainly as I have tried to speak. I hope that they 



will feel free to say whether they think that I am in any 
degree mistaken in my interpretation of the issues involved 
or in my purpose with regard to the means by which a satis- 
factory settlement of those issues may be obtained. Unity 
of purpose and of counsel are as imperatively necessary in 
this war as was unity of command in the battlefield; and 
with perfect unity of purpose and counsel will come assur- 
ance of complete victory. It can be had in no other way. 
"Peace drives" can be effectively neutralized and silenced 
only by showing that every victory of the nations associated 
against Germany brings the nations nearer the sort of peace 
which will bring security and reassurance to all peoples and 
make the recurrence of another such struggle of pitiless 
force and bloodshed forever impossible, and that nothing else 
can. Germany is constantly intimating the "terms" she will 
accept; and always finds that the world does not want terms. 
It wishes the final triumph of justice and fair dealing. 



l(» 



The 14 Points 



A Program for World Peace— Message to Congress 
of 8 January, 1918 



GENTLEMEN of the Congress : Once more, as repeatedly 
before, the spokesmen of the central empires have 
indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the 
war and the possible basis of a general peace. 

Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between 
Russian representatives and representatives of the central 
powers to which the attention of all the belligerents has been 
invited, for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be 
possible to extend these parleys into a general conference 
with regard to terms of peace and settlement. 

The Russian representatives presented not only a per- 
fectly definite statement of the principles upon which they 
would be willing to conclude peace, but also an equally 
definite program of the concrete application of those prin- 
ciples. 

The representatives of the central powers, on their part, 
presented an outline of settlement which, if much less 
definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretation until 
their specific program of practical terms was added. 

Control of Russia the German Plan. 

That program proposed no concessions at all, either to the 
sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of the population 
with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the 
Central Empires were to keep every foot of territory their 
armed forces had occupied— every province, every city, every 
point of vantage— as a permanent addition to their terri- 
toTies and their power. It is a reasonable conjecture that 
the general principles of settlement which they at first sug- 
gested originated with the more liberal statesmen of Ger- 
many and Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force 
of their own peoples' thought and purpose, while the con- 
crete terms of actual settlement came from the military 

11 



leaders, who have no thought but to keep what they have 
sot. The negotiations have been broken ofT. 

The Russian representatives were sincere and in earn- 
est. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and 
domination. 

The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full 
of perplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives 
dealing? For whom are the representatives of the central 
empires speaking? Are they speaking for the majorities of 
their respective parliaments or for the minority parties, that 
military and imperialistic minority, which has so far dom- 
inated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey 
and of the Balkan states which have felt obliged to become 
their associates in this war? 

Open Diplomacy Is Insisted Upon. 

The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly, 
very wisely, and in the true spirit of democracy, that the 
conferences they have been holding with the Teutonic and 
Turkish statesmen should be held within open, not closed, 
doors, and all the world has been audience as was desired. 
To whom have we been listening then? To those who speak 
the spirit and intention of the resolutions of the German 
reichstag on the 9th opf July last, the spirit and intention of 
the liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who 
resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon con- 
quest and subjugation? Or are we listening in fact to both 
unreconciled and in open and hopeless contradiction? These 
are very serious and pregnant questions. 

Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the 
world. 

But whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk, 
whatever the confusions of counsel and of purpose in the 
utterances of the spokesmen of the central empires, they 
have again attempted to acquaint the world with their objects 
in the war and have again challenged their adversaries to 
say what their objects are and what sort of settlement they 
would deem just and satisfactory. 

There is no good reason why that challenge should not 
be responded to, and responded to with the utmost candor. 
We did not wait for it. Not once, but again and again we 
have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, 
not in general terms only, but each time with sufficient 

12 



definition to make it clear what sort of definitive terms of 
settlement must necessarily spring out of them. 

Allies United As to Policies. 

Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with 
admirable candor and in admirable spirit for the people and 
government of Great Britain. There is no confusion of coun- 
sel among the adversaries of the central powders, no uncer- 
tainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. 

The only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fearless 
frankness, the only failure to make definite statement of the 
objects of the war, lies with Germany and her allies. 

The issues of life and death hang upon these definitions. 
No statesman who has the least conception of his responsi- 
bility ought for a moment to permit himself to continue this 
tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and treasure un- 
less he is sure beyond a peradventure that the objects of the 
vital sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of society 
and that the people for whom he speaks think them right 
and imperative as he does. 

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions 
of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more 
thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving 
voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It 
is the voice of the Russian people. They are prostrate and 
all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim power of 
Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no 
pity. 

Assistance for Russia Is Needed. 

Their power apparently is shattered, and yet their soul 
is not subservient. They wall not yield either in principle 
or in action. The conception of what is right, of what it is 
humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated 
with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit 
and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the 
admiration of every friend of mankind; and they have re- 
fused to compound their ideals or desert others that they 
themselves may be safe. 

They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, 
if anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs; 
and I believe that the people of the United States would wish 
me to respond with utter simplicity and frankness. 

13 



Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our 
heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened 
whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia 
to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace. 

For No Secret Understandings. 

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of 
peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and 
that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret 
understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and ag- 
grandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret cove- 
nants entered into in the interest of particular governments 
and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace 
of the world. 

It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every pub- 
lic man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is 
dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation 
whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of 
the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it 
has in view. 

We entered this war because violations of right had 
occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life 
of our own people impossible unless they were corrected 
and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. 

What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing 
peculiar to ourselves. 

It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and 
particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving 
nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, de- 
termine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair 
dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force 
and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in 
effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we 
see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will 
not be done to us. 

The Fourteen Points of the Program. 

The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our 
program, and that program, the only possible program, as 
we see it, is this: 

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, 
after which there shall he no private international 

14 



understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall 
proceed always frankly and in the public view. 

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the 
seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and 
in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or 
in part by international action for the enforcement 
of international covenants. 

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all 
economic barriers and the establishment of an 
equality of trade conditions among all the nations 
consenting to the peace and associating themselves 
for its maintenance. 

IV. Adequate guaranties given and taken that 
national armaments will be reduced to the lowest 
point consistent with domestic safety. 

V. A free, open-minded and absolutely impar- 
tial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a 
strict observance of the principle that in determining 
all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the 
populations concerned must have equal weight with 
the equitable claims of the government whose title 
is to be determined. 

Evacuation of Russia Necessary. 

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and 
such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia 
as will secure the best and freest co-operation of 
the other nations of the world in obtaining for her 
an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for 
the independent determination of her own political 
development and national policy and assure her of a 
sincere welcome into the society of free nations un- 
der institutions of her own choosing; and, more 
than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that 
she may need and may herself desire. The treat- 
ment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the 
months to come will be the acid test of their good 
will, of their comprehension of her needs as dis- 
tinguished from their own interests, and of their 
intelligent and unselfish sympathy. 

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must 
be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to 
limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common 

15 



with all other free nations. No other single act will 
serve as this will serve to restore confidence among 
the nations in the laws which they have themselves 
set and determined for the government of their re- 
lations with one another. Without this healing act 
the whole structure and validity of international 
law is forever impaired. 

VIII. All French territory should be freed and 
the invaded portions restored and the wrong done 
to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace 
Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world 
for nearly fifty years, should be righted in order that 
peace may once more be made secure in the interest 
of all. 

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy 
should be effected along clearly recognizable lines 
of nationality. 

Must Free Oppressed Nationalities. 

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose 
place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded 
and assured, should be accorded the freest oppor- 
tunity of autonomous development.* 

XI. Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro should 
be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia 
accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the 
relations of the several Balkan states to one another 
determined by friendly counsel along historically 
established lines of allegiance and nationality; and 
international guaranties of the political and eco- 
nomic independence and territorial integrity of the 
several Balkan states should be entered into. 

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Otto- 
man Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, 
but the other nationalities which are now under 
Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted secur- 
ity of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity 
of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles 
should be permanently opened as a free passage to 



*The tenth point was superseded by a demand for actual freedom and 
not mere autonomy for the oppressed nationalities of Austria in the Presi- 
dent's reply of 19 October, 1918, to the Austrian request for an armistice. 
This said: "The President is, therefore, no longer at liberty to accept mere 
autonomy for these peoples as a basis of peace." 

16 



the ships and commerce oi' all nations under inter- 
national guaranties. 

XIII. An independent Polish state should be 
erected which should include the territories inhab- 
ited by indisputably Polish populations, which 
should be assured a free and secure access to the sea 
and whose political and economic independence and 
territorial integrity should be guaranteed by inter- 
national covenant. 

XIV. A general association of nations must be 
formed under specific covenants for the purpose of 
affording mutual guaranties of political independ- 
ence and territorial integrity to great and small 
states alike. 

Stand Together to the End. 

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and 
assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners 
of all the governments and peoples associated together 
against the imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest 
or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end. 

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing 
to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but 
only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just 
and stable peace, such as can be secured only by removing 
the chief provocations to war, which this program does 
remove. 

We have no jealousy of German greatness and there is 
nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no 
achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enter- 
prise such as have made her record very bright and very 
enviable. 

We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way 
her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight 
her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade, 
if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other 
peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of jujstic^ 
and law and fair dealing. 

We wish her only to accept a place of equality among 
the peoples of the world — the new world in which we now 
live — instead of a place of mastery. 



If 



No Trafficking With Militarism. 

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration 
or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we 
must frankly say and necessary as a preliminary to any 
intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should 
know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to 
us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military 
party, and the men whose creed is imperial domination. 

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to 
admit of any further doubt or question. An evident prin- 
ciple runs through the whole program I have outlined. 

It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nation- 
alities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and 
safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. 
Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the 
structure of international justice can stand. The people of 
the United States could act upon no other principle, and to 
the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote 
their lives, their honor and everything that they possess. 

The moral climax of this, the culminating and final war 
for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their 
strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity 
and devotion to the test. 



18 



The Four Cardinal Principles 



Reply to Chancellor von Herding and Count Czernin 
— -Address to Congress of 11 February, 1918 



ON the 8th of January, I had the honor of addressing 
you on the objects of the war as our people conceive 
them. The prime minister of Great Britain had 
spoken in similar terms on the 5th of January. 

To these addresses, the German chancellor replied on 
the 24th, and Count Czernin for Austria on the same day. 
It is gratifying to have our desire so promptly realized that 
all exchanges of view on this great matter should be made 
in the hearing of all the world. 

Count Czernin's reply, which is directed chiefly to my 
own address, on the 8th of January, is uttered in a very 
friendly tone. He finds, in my statement, a sufficiently 
encouraging approach to the views of his own government 
to justify him in believing that it furnishes a basis for a more 
detailed discussion of purposes by the two governments. 

He is represented to have intimated that the views he 
was expressing had been communicated to me before hand 
and that I was aware of them at the time he was uttering 
them; but in this I am sure he was misunderstood. I had 
received no intimation of what he intended to say. There 
was, of course, no reason why he should communicate 
privately with me. I am quite content to be one of his public 
audience. 

Count von Hertling's reply is, I must say, very vague 
and very confusing. It is full of equivocal phrases and leads 
it is not clear where. But it is certainly in a very different 
tone from that of Count Czernin and apparently of an op- 
posite purpose. It confirms, I am sorry to say, rather than 
removes, the unfortunate impression made by what we had 
learned of the conferences at Brest-Litovsk. 

Jealous of International Action. 

His discussion and acceptance of our general principles 
lead him to no practical conclusions. He refuses to apply 

19 



them to the substantive items which must constitute the 
body of any final settlement. He is jealous of international 
action and of international counsel. 

He accepts, he says, the principle of public diplomacy, 
but he appears to insist that it be confined, at any rate in 
this case, to generalities and that the several particular ques- 
tions of territory and sovereignty, the several questions upon 
whose settlement must depend the acceptance of peace by 
the twenty-three states now engaged in the war, must be 
discussed and settled, not in general council, but severally 
by the nations most immediately concerned by interest or 
neighborhood. 

He agrees that the seas should be free, but looks askance 
at any limitation to that freedom by international action in 
the interest of the common order. He would, without re- 
serve, be glad to see economic barriers removed between 
nation and nation, for that could in no way impede the ambi- 
tions of the military party with whom he seems constrained 
to keep on terms. 

Neither does he raise objection to a limitation of arma- 
ments. That matter will be settled of itself, he thinks, by 
the economic conditions which must follow the war. 

Hertling's Terms Then Harsh. 

But the German colonies, he demands, must be returned 
without debate. He will discuss with no one but the repre- 
sentatives of Russia what dispositions shall be made of the 
peoples and the lands of the Baltic provinces; with- no one 
but the government of France the "conditions" under which 
French territory shall be evacuated, and only with Austria 
what shall be done with Poland. 

In the determination of all questions affecting the Balkan 
states he defers, as I understand him, to Austria and Turkey; 
and with regard to the agreements to be entered into con- 
cerning the non-Turkish peoples of the present Ottoman 
empire to the Turkish authorities themselves. 

After a settlement all around, effected in this fashion, 
by individual barter and concession, he would have no ob- 
jection, if I correctly interpret his statement, to a league of 
nations which would undertake to hold the new balance of 
power steady against external disturbances. 

It must be evident to every one who understands what 
this war has wrought in the opinion and temper of the world 

20 



that no general peace, no peace worth the infinite sacrifices 
of these years of tragical suffering, can possibly be arrived 
at in any such fashion. 

Peace of the World Now at Stake. 

The method the German chancellor proposes is the 
method of the congress of Vienna. We cannot and will not 
return to that. What is at stake now is the peace of the 
world. What we are striving for is a new international 
order based upon broad and universal principles of right and 
justice — no mere peace of shreds and patches. 

Is it possible that Count von Hertling does not see that, 
does not grasp it, is, in fact, living in his thought in a world 
dead and gone? Has he utterly forgotten the reichstag reso- 
lutions of the 19th of July, or does he deliberately ignore 
them? They spoke of the conditions of a general peace, not 
of national aggrandizement or of arrangements between 
state and state. 

The peace of the world, depends upon the just settlement 
of each of the several problems to which I adverted in my 
recent address to the congress. I, of course, do not mean that 
the peace of the world depends upon the acceptance of any 
particular set of suggestions as to the way in which those 
problems are to be dealt with. I mean only that those 
problems each and all affect the whole world; that unless 
they are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and unbiased 
justice, with a view to the wishes, the natural connections, 
the racial aspirations, the security and peace of mind of 
the peoples involved, no permanent peace will have been 
attained. 

Must Settle All Questions Right. 

They cannot be discussed separately or in corners. None 
of them constitutes a private or separate interest from which 
the opinion of the world may be shut out. Whatever affects 
the peace affects mankind, and nothing settled by military 
force, if settled wrong, is settled at all. It will presently 
have to be reopened. 

Is Count von Hertling not aware that he is speaking in 
the court of mankind ; that all the awakened nations of the 
world now sit in judgment on what every public man, of 
whatever nation may say on the issues of a conflict which 
has spread to every region of the world? 

21 



The reichstag resolutions of July themselves, frankly 
accepted the decisions of that court. There shall be no an- 
nexations, no contributions, no punitive damages. Peoples 
are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another 
by an international conference or an understanding between 
rivals and sintagonists. 

National aspirations must be respected, peoples may 
now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. 
"Self-determination" is not a mere phrase. It is an impera- 
tive principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth 
ignore at their peril. 

We cannot have general peace for the asking, or by the 
mere arrangements of a peace conference. It cannot be 
pieced together out of individual understandings between 
powerful states. All the parties to this war must join in the 
settlement of every issue anywhere involved in it because 
what we are seeking is a peace that we can all unite to guar- 
antee and maintain and every item of it must be submitted 
to the common judgment whether it be right and fair, an 
act of justice, rather than a bargain between sovereigns. 

America Not Seeking to Interfere. 

The United States has no desire to interfere in European 
alYairs or to act as arbiter in European territorial disputes. 
She would disdain to take advantage of any internal weak- 
ness or disorder to impose her own will upon another people. 
She is quite ready to be shown that the settlements she has 
suggested are not the best or the most enduring. They are 
only her own provisional sketch of principles, and of the 
way in which they should be applied. 

But she entered this war because she was made a part- 
ner, whether she would or not, in the sufferings and indig- 
nities inflicted by the military masters of Germany against 
the peace and security of mankind; and the conditions of 
peace will touch her as nearly as they will touch any other 
nation to which is intrusted a leading part in the mainte- 
nance of civilization. 

She cannot see her way to peace until the causes of this 
war are removed, its renewal rendered as nearly as may 
be impossible. 

This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of 
small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union 
and the force to make good their claim to determine their 

22 



own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Cove- 
nants must now be entered into which will render such 
things impossible for the future; and those covenants must 
be backed by the united force of all the nations that love 
justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost. 

If territorial settlements and the political relations of 
great populations which have not the organized power to 
resist are to be determined by the contracts of the powerful 
governments, which consider themselves most directly af- 
fected, as Count von Hertling proposes, why may not eco- 
nomic questions also? 

Justice the Concern of All. 

It has come about in the altered world in which we now 
find ourselves that justice and the rights of peoples affect 
the whole field of international dealing as much as access to 
raw materials and fair and equal conditions of trade. 

Count von Hertling wants the essential bases of com- 
mercial and industrial life to be safeguarded by common 
agreement and guarantee, but he cannot expect that to be 
conceded him if the other matters to be determined by the 
articles of peace are not handled in the same way as items 
in the final accounting. He cannot ask the benefit of com- 
mon agreement in the one field without according it in the 
other. 

I take it for granted that he sees that separate and sel- 
fish compacts with regard to trade and the essential ma- 
terials of manufacture would afford no foundation for peace. 
Neither, he may rest assured, will separate and selfish com- 
pacts with regard to provinces and peoples. 

Count Gzernin seems to see the fundamental elements 
of peace with clear eyes and does not seek to obscure them. 
He sees that an independent Poland, made up of all the in- 
disputably Polish peoples who lie contiguous to one another, 
is a matter of European concern and must, of course, be con- 
ceded; that Belgium must be evacuated and restored, no mat- 
ter what sacrifices and concessions that may involve! and 
that national aspirations must be satisfied, even within his 
own empire, in the common interest of Europe and mankind. 

If he is silent about questions which touch the interest 
and purpose of his allies more nearly than they touch those 
of Austria only, it must, of course, be because he feels con- 
strained, I suppose, to defer to Germany and Turkey in the 
circumstances. 

23 



Seeing and conceding, as he does, the essential principles 
involved and the necessity of candidly applying them, he 
naturally feels that Austria can respond to the purpose of 
peace as expressed by the United States with less embarrass- 
ment than could Germany. He probably would have gone 
much further had it not been for the embarrassment of 
Austria's alliances and of her dependence upon Germany. 

The Four Cardinsd Principles. 

After all, the test of whether it is possible for either 
government to go any further in this comparison of views is 
simple and obvious. The principles to be applied are these: 
I. That each part of the final settlement must 
be based upon the essential justice of that particu- 
lar cause and upon such adjustments as are most 
likely to bring a peace that will be permanent. 

n. That peoples and provinces are not to be 
bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if 
they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even 
the great game, now forever discredited, of the bal- 
ance of power; but that — 

III. Every territorial settlement involved in 
this war must be made in the interest and for the 
benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a 
part of any mere adjustment or compromise of 
claims among rival states; and — 

IV. That all well defined national aspirations 
shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be 
accorded them without introducing new or perpetu- 
ating old elements of discord and antagonism that 
would be likely in time to break the peace of 
Europe and consequently of the world. 

A general peace erected on such foundations can be dis- 
cussed. Until such a peace can be secured we have no choice 
but to go on. So far as we can judge, these principles that 
we regard as fundamental are already everywhere accepted 
as imperative, except among the spokesmen of the military 
and annexationist party in Germany. If they have anywhere 
else been rejected the objectors have not been sufficiently 
numerous or influential to make their voices audible. 

The tragical circumstance is that this one party in Ger- 
many is apparently willing and able to send millions of 

24 



men to their death to prevent what all the world now sees 
to be just. 

I would not be a true spokesman of the people of the 
United States if I did not say once more that we entered this 
war upon no small occasion and that we never can turn 
back from a course chosen upon principle. 

To Use America's Full Force. 

Our resources are in part mobilized now and we shall 
not pause until they are mobilized in their entirety. Our 
armies are rapidly going to the fighting front and will go 
more and more rapidly. Our whole strength will be put 
into this war of emancipation — emancipation from the threat 
and attempted mastery of selfish groups of autocratic rulers 
— whatever the difficulties and present partial delays. 

We are indomitable in our power of independent action 
and can in no circumstances consent to live in a world gov- 
erned by intrigue and force. We believe that our own desire 
for a new international order under which reason and justice 
and the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the 
desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new 
order the world will be without peace and human life will 
lack tolerable conditions of existence and development. 
Having set our hand to the task of achieving it we shall not 
turn back. 

I hope that it is not necessary for me to add that no word 
of what I have said is intended as a threat. That is not the 
temper of our people. I have spoken thus only that the 
whole world may know the true spirit of America — that 
men everywhere may know that our passion for justice and 
for self-government is no mere passion of words, but a 
passion which, once set in action, must be satisfied. The 
power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. 

It will never be used in aggression or for the aggran- 
dizement of any selfish interest of our own. It springs out 
of freedom and is for the service of freedom. 



25 



Force to the Utmost 



The Acceptance of the Challenge of Prussianism in the 
Liberty Day Address at Baltimore, 6 April, 1918 



FELLOW Citizens: This is the anniversary of our ac- 
ceptance of Germany's challenge to fight for our right 
to live and be free, and for the sacred rights of free 
men everyw^here. 

The nation is awake. There is no need to call to it. We 
knovv^ what the war must cost, our utmost sacrifice, the lives 
of our fittest men, and, if need be, all that we possess. The 
loan we are met to discuss is one of the least parts of what 
we are called upon to give and to do, though in itself im- 
perative. 

The people of the whole country are alive to the neces- 
sity of it and are ready to offer to the utmost, even where it 
involves a sharp skimping and daily sacrifice to lend out 
of meager earnings. They will look with reprobation and 
contempt upon those who can and will not, upon those who 
demand a higher rate of interest, upon those who think of 
it as a mere commercial transaction. 

I have not come, therefore, to urge the loan. I have 
come only to give you, if I can, a more vivid conception of 
what it is for. 

Issues of the War Now Clear. 

The reasons for this great war, the reason why it had 
to come, the need to fight it through, and the issues that 
hang upon its outcome are more clearly disclosed now than 
ever before. It is easy to see just what this particular loan 
means because the cause we are fighting for stands more 
sharply revealed than at any previous crisis of the mo- 
mentous struggle. 

The man who knows least can now see plainly how the 
cause of justice stands and what the imperishable thing is he 
is asked to invest in. Men in America may be more sure 

26 



( 



than they ever were before that the cause is their own and 
that, if it should be lost, their own great nation's place and 
mission in the world would be lost with it. 

I call you to witness, my fellow countrymen, that at no 
stage of this terrible business have I judged the purposes 
of Germany intemperately. I should be ashamed in the 
presence of affairs so grave, so fraught with the destinies of 
mankind throughout all the world, to speak with truculence, 
to use the weak language of hatred or vindictive purpose. 

We must judge as we would be judged. I have sought 
to learn the objects Germany has in this war from the 
mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal as frankly with 
them as I wished them to deal with me. I have laid bare 
our own ideals, our own purposes, without reserve or doubt- 
ful phrase, and have asked them to say as plainly what it is 
that they seek. 

Final Justice the Only Aim. 

We have ourselves proposed no injustice, no aggression. 
We are ready, whenever the final reckoning is made, to be 
just to the German people, deal fairly with the German 
power, as with all others. There can be no difference be- 
tween peoples in the final judgment if it is indeed to be a 
righteous judgment. 

To propose anything but justice, even-handed and dis- 
passionate justice, to Germany at any time, whatever the 
outcome of the war, would be to renounce and dishonor our 
own cause. For we ask nothing that we are not willing to 
accord. 

It has been with this thought that I have sought to learn 
from those who spoke for Germany whether it was justice 
or dominion and the execution of their own will upon the 
other nations of the world that the German leaders were 
seeking. They have answered, answered in unmistakable 
terms. They have avowed that it was not justice, but 
dominion and the unhindered execution of their own will. 

The avowal has not come from Germany's statesmen. 
It has come from her military leaders, who are her real 
rulers. Her statesmen have said that they wished peace, and 
were ready to discuss its terms whenever their opponents 
were willing to sit down at the conference table with them. 

Her present chancellor has said — in indefinite and un- 
certain terms, indeed, and in phrases that often seem to 



deny their own meaning, but with as much plainness as he 
thought prudent — that he believed that peace should be 
based upon the principles which we had declared would be 
our own in the final settlement. 

Recalls Brest-Litovsk Perfidy. • 

At Brest-Litovsk her civilian delegates spoke in similar 
terms; professed their desire to conclude a fair peace and 
accord to the peoples with whose fortunes they were dealing 
the right to choose their own allegiances. 

But action accompanied and followed the profession. 
Their military masters, the men who act for Germany and 
exhibit her purpose in execution, proclaimed a very dif- 
ferent conclusion. 

We cannot mistake what they have done — in Russia, in 
Finland, in the Ukraine, in Rumania. 

The real test of their justice and fair play has come. 
From this we may judge the rest. They are enjoying in 
Russia a cheap triumph in which no brave or gallant nation 
can long take pride. 

A great people, helpless by their own act, lies for the 
time at their mercy. Their fair professions are forgotten. 
They nowhere set up justice, but everywhere impose their 
power and exploit everything for their own use and aggran- 
dizement, and the peoples of conquered provinces are in- 
vited to be free under their dominion! 

Are we not justified in believing that they would do the 
same things at their western front if they were not there 
face to face with armies whom even their countless divisions 
cannot overcome? If when they have felt their check to be 
final they should propose favorable and equitable terms 
with regard to Belgium and France and Italy could they 
blame us if we concluded that they do so only to assure 
themselves of a free hand in Russia and the east? 

Germans Planned World Empire. 

Their purpose is undoubtedly to make all the free and 
ambitious nations of the Baltic peninsula, all the lands that 
Turkey has dominated and misruled, subject to their will 
and ambition and build upon that dominion an empire of 
force upon which they fancy that they can then erect an 
empire of gain and commercial supremacy, an empire as 

28 



hostile to the Americas as to the Europe which it will over- 
awe, an empire which will ultimately master Persia, India, 
and the peoples of the far east. 

In such a program our ideals, the ideals of justice and 
humanity and liberty, the principle of the free self-deter- 
mination of nations upon which all the modern world in- 
sists, can play no part. 

They are rejected for the ideals of power, for the prin- 
ciple that the strong must rule the weak, that trade must 
follow the flag, whether those to whom it is taken welcome 
it or not, that the peoples of the world are to be made subject 
to the patronage and overlordship of those who have the 
power to enforce it. 

Peril to America in the Program. 

That program once carried out, America and all who 
care or dare to stand with her must arm and prepare them- 
selves to contest the mastery of the world, a mastery in 
which the rights of common men, the rights of women and 
of all who are weak, must for the time being be trodden 
under foot and disregarded, and the old, age-long struggle 
for freedom and right must begin again at its beginning. 
Everything that America has lived for, and loved, and grown 
great to vindicate and bring to a glorious realization will 
have fallen in utter ruin, and the gates of mercy will once 
more pitilessly shut upon mankind! 

The thing is preposterous and impossible, and yet is 
not that what the whole course and action of the German 
armies has meant wherever they have movqd? 

I do not wish, even in this moment of utter disillusion- 
ment, to judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what 
the German arms have accomplished with unpitying thor- 
oughness throughout every fair region they have touched. 
What, then, are we to do? 

For myself, I am ready, ready still, ready even now, to 
discuss a fair and just and honest peace at any time that it 
is sincerely purposed — a peace in which the strong and the 
weak shall fare alike. But the answer, when I proposed 
such a peace, came from the German commanders in Russia, 
and I cannot mistake the meaning of the answer. 

Accepts the Challenge of Force. 

I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All 
the world shall know that you accept it. It shall appear in 

29 



the utter sacrifice and self-forgetfulness with which we shall 
give all that we love and all that we have to redeem the 
world and make it fit for free men like ourselves to live in. 

This now is the meaning of all that we do. Let every- 
thing that we say, my fellow countrymen, everything that 
we henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this re- 
sponse till the majesty and might of our concerted power 
shall fill the thought and utterly defeat the force of those 
who flout and misprize what we honor and hold dear. 

Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, 
shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the 
affairs of men; whether right, as America conceives it, or 
dominion, as she conceives it, shall determine the destinies 
of mankind. 

There is, therefore, but one response possible 
from us — force; force to the utmost, force without 
stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force 
which shall make right the law of the world and 
cast every selfish dominion down in the dust. 



30 



No Half-Way Peace 



Four Ends for Which the World Is Fighting 
Mt. Vernon Address of 4 July, 1918 



GENTLEMEN of the Diplomatic Corps and My Fellow 
Citizens : I am happy to draw apart with you to this 
quiet place of old counsel in order to speak a little 
of the meaning of this day of our nation's independence. 
The place seems very still and remote. It is as serene and 
untouched by the hurry of the world as it was in those great 
days long ago when Gen. Washington was here and held 
leisurely conference with the men who were to be asso- 
ciated with him in the creation of a nation. 

From these gentle slopes they looked out upon the world 
and saw it whole, saw it with the light of the future upon 
it, saw it with modern eyes that turned away from a past 
which men of liberated spirits could no longer endure. 

It is for that reason that we cannot feel, even here, in 
the immediate presence of this sacred tomb, that this is a 
place of death. It was a place of achievement. A great 
promise that was meant for all mankind was here given plan 
and reality. 

The associations by which we are here surrounded are 
the inspiring associations of that noble death which is only 
a glorious consummation. From this green hillside we also 
ought to be able to see with comprehending eyes the world 
that lies about us and should conceive anew the purposes 
that must set men free. 

Speaking for All Mankind. 

It is significant — significant of their own character and 
purpose and of the influences they were setting afoot — that 
Washington and his associates, like the barons at Runny- 
mede, spoke and acted not for a class, but for a people. It 
has been left for us to see to it that it shall be understood 
that they spoke and acted not for a single people only, but 
for all mankind. 

31 



They were thinking not of themselves and of the ma- 
terial interests which centered in the little groups of land- 
holders and merchants and men of affairs with whom they 
were accustomed to act, in Virginia and the colonies to the 
north and south of her, but of a people which wished to be 
done with classes and special interests and the authority 
of men whom they had not themselves chosen to rule over 
them. 

They entertained no private purpose, desired no peculiar 
privilege. They were consciously planning that men of 
every class should be free and America a place to which men 
out of every nation might resort who wished to share with 
them the rights and privileges of free men. 

And we take our cue from them — do we not? We in- 
tend what they intended. We here in America believe our 
participation in this present war to be only the fruitage of 
what they planted. 

Liberty For the World Is Aim. 

Our case differs from theirs only in this, that it is our 
inestimable privilege to concert with men out of every 
nation what shall make not only the liberties of America 
secure, but the liberties of every other people as well. We 
are happy in the thought that we are permitted to do what 
they would have done had they been in our place. 

There must now be settled once for all what was settled 
for America in the great age upon whose inspiration we 
draw today. This is surely a fitting place from which calmly 
to look out upon our task, that we may fortify our spirits 
for its accomplishment. And this is the appropriate place 
from which to avow, alike to the friends who look on and 
to the friends with whom we have the happiness to be asso- 
ciated in action, the faith and purpose with which we act. 

Justice for Helpless Peoides. 

This, then, is our conception of the great struggle in 
which we are engaged. The plot is written plain upon every 
scene and every act of the supreme tragedy. On the one 
hand stand the peoples of the world — not only the peoples 
actually engaged, but many others also who suffer under 
mastery but cannot act; peoples of many races and in every 
part of the world — the people of stricken Russia still, among 

12 



the rest, though they are for the moment unorganized and 
helpless. 

Opposed to them, masters of many armies, stand an iso- 
lated, friendless group of governments who speak no com- 
mon purpose, but only selfish ambitions of their own by 
which none can profit but themselves, and whose peoples 
are fuel in their hands; governments which fear their people 
and yet are for the time their sovereign lords, making every 
choice for them and disposing of their lives and fortunes as 
they will, as well as of the lives and fortunes of every people 
who fall under their power — governments clothed with the 
strange trappings and the primitive authority of an age that 
is altogether alien and hostile to our own. 

The Past and the Present are in deadly grapple, and the 
peoples of the world are being done to death between them. 

What the People Fight For. 

There can be but one issue. The settlement must be 
final. There can be no compromise. No half-way decision 
would be tolerable. No half-way decision is conceivable. 
These are the ends for which the associated peoples of the 
world are fighting and which must be conceded them before 
there can be peace: 

I. The destruction of every arbitrary power 
anywhere that can separately, secretly, and of its 
single choice disturb the peace of the world; or, if 
it cannot be presently destroyed, at the least its re- 
duction to virtual impotence. 

II. The settlement of every question, whether 
of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrange- 
ment, or of political relationship, upon the basis of 
the free acceptance of that settlement by the people 
immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of 
the material interest or advantage of any other na- 
tion or people which may desire a different settle- 
ment for the sake of its own exterior influence or 
mastery. 

III. The consent of all nations to be governed 
in their conduct towainls each other by the same 
principles of honor and of respect for the common 
law of civilized society that govern the individual 
citizens of all modern states in their relations with 
one another; to the end that all promises and cove- 



nants may be sacredly observed, no private plots or 
conspiracies hatched, no selfish injuries wrought 
with impunity, and a mutual trust established upon 
the handsome foundation of a mutual respect for 
right. 

IV. The establishment of an organization of 
peace which shall make it certain that the combined 
power of free nations will check every invasion of 
right and serve to make peace and justice the more 
secure by affording a definite tribunal of opinion to 
which all must submit and by which every interna- 
tional readjustment that cannot be amicably agreed 
upon by the peoples directly concerned shall be 
sanctioned. 

These great objects can be put into a single sentence. 
What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent 
of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of 
mankind. 

Cannot Win by Debating. 

These great ends cannot be achieved by debating and 
seeking to reconcile and accommodate what statesmen may 
wish, with their projects for balances of power and of na- 
tional opportunity. They can be realized only by the deter- 
mination of what the thinking peoples of the world desire, 
with their longing hope for justice and for social freedom 
and opportunity. 

I can fancy that the air of this place carries the accents 
of such principles with a peculiar kindness. Here were 
started forces which the great nation against which they 
were primarily directed at first regarded as a revolt against 
its rightful authority, but which it has long since seen to 
have been a step in the liberation of its own people as well 
as of the people of the United States, and I stand here now 
to speak— speak proudly and with confident hope- — of the 
spread of this revolt, this liberation, to the great stage of 
the world itself. 

The blinded rulers of Prussia have roused forces they 
knew little of — forces which, once roused, can never be 
crushed to earth again; for they have at their heart an in- 
spiration and a purpose which are deathless and of the very 
stuff of triumph 1 



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